


An Arm and a Leg

by INMH



Series: hc_bingo fanfiction fills 2020 [8]
Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: (...and then retrieving them?), (in a very literal sense), Drama, Gen, Healers, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Limbs, Mutilation, Past Mutilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:27:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25123150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: Ethan catches his breath.
Series: hc_bingo fanfiction fills 2020 [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1789369
Kudos: 9





	An Arm and a Leg

There’s a spider above Ethan’s face, but he doesn’t really care.  
  
It’s a big, ugly, pulsing thing that has clearly got its too-many eyes on him, and under normal circumstances Ethan would be putting as much distance between himself and it as quickly as possible.  
  
But these aren’t exactly normal circumstances, now are they?  
  
He brings his left hand up to cover his eyes, block out the spider. The staples are large, built for heavy-duty construction and repair, ugly and jarring against his skin. There’s an obvious split in the skin of his wrist that hasn’t healed yet, held together only by the staples; interesting, because his leg has healed without a seam. Maybe it’s different with hands and arms than feet and legs; Ethan isn’t a doctor, he doesn’t know.  
 _  
I’ll ask when I get home: ‘Hey, doc, which is easier to reattach, a foot or a hand?’_  
 _  
‘Why do you ask?’_  
 _  
‘Well, funny story: I went to Louisiana to find my wife who’s been missing for three years, and I ran into this Texas-Chainsaw-style cannibal family that can apparently reattach limbs that they’ve sawed off…_ ’  
  
Ethan starts to laugh, and then quickly covers his mouth, not taking his hand away until he’s certain he doesn’t hear footsteps. He definitely doesn’t want Crazy Axe Guy to hear him, because Ethan can all-too-easily imagine an axe-blade plowing through the wood above his face.  
  
(Would it split the spider in half, or would it knock it onto Ethan’s face?  
  
Better not to find out.)  
 _  
Wait._  
  
Ethan’s hand, in spite of its grisly appearance, is perfectly functional: It doesn’t hurt unless he presses against the staples or the unhealed seam in his skin. The only noticeable difference in sensation is the slight tingling in his hand and wrist, much in the way it might have ached if he’d slept on it funny. Once he pulls the empty bottle from his pocket, he can feel the warmth and pressure of the glass in his hand; the label’s been scratched off, so Ethan can’t even begin to guess what it is.  
  
Other than, apparently, it reconnects limbs.  
  
Ethan tips the bottle over experimentally, dripping a few lingering drops of liquid onto the jagged, open wound beneath the staples. He feels nothing when it hits the damaged flesh, doesn’t burn or sting at all: But as he watches, a _little_ bit of the skin starts to knit together as he watches. It must not be enough to completely heal the rest of the wound, which makes Ethan wonder exactly how much was used on him to heal it in the first place; they couldn’t have _just_ used staples, after all.  
 _  
Of course not- that just wouldn’t make any **sense.**_  
  
Ethan shuts his eyes, lies back and covers his face with both hands.  
  
If those… _Freaks_ in the house hadn’t used this stuff on his hand, and allowed him to use it on his leg, Ethan would be dead. He would have bled out from the stump of his arm long before he’d ended up at that dinner table with them. Even if he had somehow survived, he would have been permanently crippled and significantly less capable of fighting back or escaping.  
  
The thought makes his stomach roll- he is not, after all, even close to being out of the woods yet.  
  
And he won’t be until he finds Mia.  
 _  
Is **that** how she kept getting back up?_  
  
Ethan shudders.  
  
He needs to keep moving. Crazy Axe Guy was carrying Mia earlier, and that might mean that she’s still alive; if Ethan could stab her and she could survive (and then some), if he could have his limbs cut off and keep going, then maybe she’s still around too. He has to at least _try_ to find her.  
 _  
And then we’ll escape_ , Ethan thinks, rolling into his hands and knees and starting off at a crawl down the passage, careful to duck his head to avoid the spider. _We’ll run for the road and escape._  
  
In the meanwhile, he’ll be keeping an eye out for more of those jars, more of that bizarre healing-liquid that saved his limbs.  
  
Next time, it might save his life.  
  
-End


End file.
